Cuirass hit by an 1815 cannon.
What do you think would 1881 era artillery do to a few 100 wooden men...

His army is little more than split logs the moment the real army shows up.

Split logs and kindling, just as real men would have been ground beef. No man on the field can withstand cannon fire; it is no weakness of the wooden men that they are nearly as vulnerable.

And that, coincidently, is the answer to the OP question.
He simply can't create an army that will win him the throne. No matter how many puppets he is able to create - guns and cannons will see them dispatched.

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

The key difference is that a cannon will cause invariably catastrophic damage, while a bullet might not. A bullet will damage a man, but the pain factor will put him out of action "along with bleeding." That does not apply to the wooden men. In a field battle, the wooden men are no better than regular infantry, but in a close-quarters fight with only handguns and melee weapons, the wooden soldiers have the clear advantage. Therefore, it really falls to how Geppetto handles them: if he squanders them in field battles, he'll lose, but if he runs an insurgency, he has a chance.

If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
--Mace

The Old Testament has as much validity for the foundation of a religion as the pattern my recent case of insect bites formed on my ass.
--Solauren

First -we are talking about 1881 bullets - 10.4×47mmR in case of the italians 20 gr of lead at 1400 ft/s - they will tear wood apart just like they do meatbags.

And if the come into melee (how? by the military Genious Gepetto ambushing an army of experienced soldiers moving into a revolt situation which they know will be faught by small scale ambushes?)- they are far outnumbered and will be swarmed and brought down by sheer numbers.

There wasn't a service handgun issued back then, afaik, but the bayonet was a 50cm sword. Well suited to block any melee attack, and to chop wood...

Look at the combat capabilities of a wood man army.

Animated puppet - so his joints might not work as well as a human one.
No super strength.
A body made of carveable (= soft) wood.
No training in hand to hand combat.
No military leader.
No weapons apart from maybe axes or other looted stuff (hunting guns).

We don't even know if the marionettes are able to act independently and adapt to situations - other than pinoccio they seem to be very obedient and loyal - which might mean that they do only what they are told to do.

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

What is bayoneting a block of wood going to do? They won't look pretty with the puncture in them, but they don't have any blood or organs to worry about. Even things like shrapnel, hydrostatic shock, etc, won't mean a thing to them. I'm sure cannons would be devastating if they struck one directly, but even then short of decapitation they can reconstitute themselves with fairly common materials. They're not indestructible, no, but they're extremely hardly relative to humans, and augmented with mercenary companies who do have military competence they'd make a tremendous difference in a new, brittle nation not widely accepted by everyone within it.

What is bayoneting a block of wood going to do? They won't look pretty with the puncture in them, but they don't have any blood or organs to worry about. Even things like shrapnel, hydrostatic shock, etc, won't mean a thing to them. I'm sure cannons would be devastating if they struck one directly, but even then short of decapitation they can reconstitute themselves with fairly common materials. They're not indestructible, no, but they're extremely hardly relative to humans, and augmented with mercenary companies who do have military competence they'd make a tremendous difference in a new, brittle nation not widely accepted by everyone within it.

I repeat myself - their bayonet is a 50cm sword. A sword with handle and a real blade. Not a spike or anything - a real blade that is able to chop.

Also - wood splinters when shot. Even a 9mm will fuck a block of wood up. The bullet from their rifles - they are like a 1911 round, but with tripple the speed. Will tear through any human-sized block of wood and splinter it badly. A few volleys of a couple of thousand of these, and you don't even need artillery. The situation will be like the battles of the Zulu wars, just that instead of thousands of melee fighters dying while trying to overrun a few hundred people with rifles, it will be a few hundred melee fighters torn to shreds by a couple thousand riflemen and their artillery support.

Mercenaries won't be on their side. First - in 1881 there weren't any mercenaries worth mentioning around. Their time was long over.
Second - mercenaries want to be on the side that wins, so they can spend their money. Guy with a few dozwn wooden automatons vs the Kingdom of Italy? What side do you think they woulld join (if there were any...)

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay